Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound on yours.
heaven is eternal, earth everlasting. they endure this way because they do not live for themselves. in the same way, the wise person puts himself last, and thereby finds himself first, holds himself outside, and thereby remains at the center, abandons himself, and is thereby fulfilled.
CLEOPATRA: If it be love indeed, tell me how much. ANTONY: There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned. CLEOPATRA: I'll set a bourne how far to be belov'd. ANTONY: Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.
Come, swear it, damn thyself, lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves should fear to seize thee; therefore be double-damned, swear,--thou art honest.